inSSIDer

inSSIDer is a Wi-Fi network scanner application for Microsoft Windows and OS X developed by MetaGeek, LLC. It has received awards such as a 2008 Infoworld Bossie Award for "Best of Open Source Software in Networking", but as of inSSIDer 3, it is no longer open-source.

History

inSSIDer began as a replacement for NetStumbler, a popular Windows Wi-Fi scanner, which had not been actively developed for several years and reputedly did not work with modern 64-bit operating systems or versions of Windows higher than Windows XP. The project was inspired by Charles Putney on The Code Project.

Features

  • New in Version 5.0: channel utilization break down to show device (AP and client) airtime utilization; see connected client devices and info about client such as utilization and signal strength
  • Gathers information from wireless card and software
  • Helps choose the best wireless channel available
  • Wi-Fi network information such as SSID, MAC, vendor, data rate, signal strength, and security
  • Graphs signal strength over time
  • Shows which Wi-Fi network channels overlap

System requirements

Windows

OS X

References

Uses material from the Wikipedia article inSSIDer, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.